HitBTC Review

HitBTC Review by professional Forex trading experts the “ForexSQ” FX trading team, Finding out everything you need to know about the broker in this HitBTC Review.

HitBTC Review

HitBTC is one of the most popular crypto currency exchanges, judging by the Bitcoin trading volume. Other than that they offer a wide variety of allcoins, much like Bittrex.

The company, security of funds

While being a well-established exchange, HitBTC does not officially provide information on the country in which they are based. Some reports link them to Europe, while others suggest Hong Kong. We aren’t certain at this point, but what we are sure is that they are no regulated.

The majority of the companies in the crypto-space are not regulated, which always brings a bit of worry, when dealing with them. Most regulatory agencies, like the UK’s FCA, do not recognize such entities as which they should monitor (yet). HitBTC is also not registered as a payment provider, as it only provides banking services to “institutional investors and major market makers”.

HitBTC was hacked in early 2016, but didn’t provide much information on the incident. While users haven’t complained at that particular event, a lot of negative feedback is available in the forums. The reported issues are of all types, from a slow verification procedure, to coins “lost”, to not allowing withdrawals, to … basically every problem one can imagine. On top of that, there are claims the BTC volume at this exchange is artificially increased.

Trading conditions

Trading instruments (cryptocurrencies)
There are over 150 digital assets available at HitBTC. Most of them are traded against Bitcoin and Ethereum. When it comes to the (fiat) currencies, some coins are traded versus the UDST (USD Tether, a cryptocurrency, backed by real dollars) and even fewer against EUR.

Minimum initial deposit
The minimum deposit at HitBTC is everything above the given coin’s network fee. This is quite obvious to experienced traders, but may not be for newbies. Given the fact the company does not accept fiat currency deposits from most clients, mentioning a USD level will not make much sense.

Leverage
Trading on leverage is not allowed at HitBTC. While some traders would enjoy such a service, this is not necessarily a “must”, as cryptocurrencies tend to be very volatile. In comparison, the “traditional” currencies fluctuate by very small amounts, and great leverage ratios are required in order to achieve meaningful day trading results. Some forex brokers even go a bit out of hand, providing 1:500 in leverage.

Fees
HitBTC charges 0.10% in trading fees from those who buy/sell from the first available bid/ask, the so called market “takers”. On the other hand traders who provide liquidity (by placing their own bids and asks) are paid a 0.01% rebate. These are very competitive commissions, given the fact some companies charge fees from market makers, instead of giving them rebates. Nowadays the taker fee goes as high as 0.25% for the traders operating with low volumes.

If you only want to speculate on the future value of Bitcoin and not bother with owning the actual coins, you can alternatively try one of the forex brokers, which provides bitcoin trading. The fees there are included in the spread, which makes them a bit harder to compare, to the ones provided by exchanges.

Trading platform
HitBTC offers a web-based platform, something which is common among crypto-exchanges. While this has the obvious drawback of increasing your browser’s resource consumption (mostly RAM nowadays), it does still allow you to access your account from any device. This is not the case with leading forex trading platforms, like MetaTrader4 (MT4). That being said, the layout available at HitBTC is fairly nice.

Charting is provided by TradingView and a pop-up feature is provided for more detailed analysis. The instrument list is placed next to it and more importantly it is devided into four categories. The order book also looks neat, placed at in the bottom of the page. One of the most unique features of HitBTC is the “chatbox”, appropriately called the “Trollbox”. Despite the content not being very sophisticated, the functionality may come in handy, when a major news story breaks-out, as at least some traders will share what they have found.

Methods of payment
HitBTC only accepts bank transfers from institutional level clients. The regular traders/investors must transfer their crypto-assets directly. Wallets are provided for every major coin, available at HitBTC, which means basically every major coin.

HitBTC is a popular cryptocurrency exchange. It provides trading in over 150 different coins, with new ones being added constantly. The company does not accept fiat currency transfers from average traders. Our main concern with HitBTC comes from the plethora of negative user reviews. While some of them may be fake, their number is so high, we can’t dismiss them.